It's not Thursday
by BIFF1
Summary: Valentine's Day comes every year, even when you're at war. Neville has a particularly unpleasant Valentine's Day. mentions of HP/GW and N/L


**A/N: Done for the Anti-Valentine's Day challenge by OCDdegrassi, I had said it was no pairing but it got a little pair-y when I wrote it...oops. Hope you enjoy it anyway.**

**Not Thursday?**

He heard the snap everywhere, it seemed to echo in the small dark room, he heard the sharp intake of breath as he tried to fill his lungs with so much air there would be no room for crying. He didn't want to let them have that satisfaction, they were laughing cruelly already taunting him but he wasn't going to cry. He was better than that now.

"Poor little Longbottom going to cry like your mother did?"

Neville bit his tongue, it wasn't the first time they had brought up the torture of his parents but he wasn't going to cry. He was different now, stronger, and not alone.

"Poor little Longbottom," laughed the female Carrow, "going to cry like your gran?"

At this Neville actually laughed, his gran cry? That was the most absurd thing he had ever heard, she was the strongest, toughest person he had ever known, she had put four Deatheaters in the hospital when they had tried to take her hostage. But as his body jerked with the laughter the sharp pain in his arm surged throughout the rest of his body.

They had definitely broken his arm this time.

"Oh he's no fun today, Amycus, let him down."

Amycus Carrow moved forward and with a look of disappointment and disgust on his face touched his wand to the shackles and let Neville tumble to the floor, right on top of his freshly broken arm.

He almost bit his tongue off in an effort to keep the scream in his mouth.

"There's still time for dinner let's go." Alecto Carrow grabbed Neville's unbroken arm and yanked him up and pushed him out the door, "The halls can be dangerous,we'll go with you Longbottom, to protect you." They snickered as they pushed the broken boy in front of them.

Despite the broken arm and the heckling Carrows, Neville Longbottom walked into the Great Hall with his back straight, eyes dry and his head held high, his eyes pulled instinctively to the head table. His stomach turned as he saw Snape sitting in Dumbledore's chair, it wasn't right, if anyone belonged in that chair it was McGonagall. She however was sitting as far from Snape as she could, her mouth that thin angry line it was so often now.

The normal buzz of the great hall died off as the students began to realize who had been escorted into the room by the Dark Arts professor and the equally freightening Muggle Studies teacher.

_Longbottom_

_Neville Longbottom_

The students murmured as he walked past them, his left arm hanging useless at his side, even from the opposite side of the Hall they could tell it had been broken, Neville's skin was an unnatural white and his mouth shut firmly.

Madam Pomfrey rushed to Neville's side glowering at the Carrows as they walked happily past.

"Sit down Neville," she told him in that firm worried motherly tone that made him hurt somewhere deep inside.

He sat silently at the near empty Gryfindore table and let the elderly nurse tend to his arm, "Those monsters." she grumbled waving her wand over his arm, "are you alright?"

"I am fine." he told her his voice far more confident then he ever would have thought it could be.

"What a way to spend the day, hanging from that dank ceiling." she rubbed his arm and went slowly and quietly back to her seat beside McGonagall.

Neville ate silently alone, a virtual pariah. A wide berth given to him for fear that the Carrows would think they were in league with Dumbledore's Army.

He left dinner early focusing so intensely on not being followed he didn't notice the pink hearts floating down from the ceiling like happy pink snowflakes.

He found his way into the room of requirement relatively easy only needing to double back once.

Ginny was pacing the entire circumference of the room of requirement, it had been hours since she had returned with food from the kitchen's, Neville should have been back by now.

"It's okay Ginny, he'll be back soon." Luna's airy voice seemed oddly grounded.

"He must have been caught, we'll need to launch a rescue party." she pulled her wand out of her back pocket and started toward the door. She gave a start when she found that Luna had clamped her small pale hand around her arm.

"He will be fine." she told her again, "Sit with me." she patted the thick burlap material of the hammock she was swinging in. Luna's eyes were wider than usual, red rimmed and desperate. It pulled at something in Ginny, something about Luna always made her feel a little heart sick.

Ginny sat heavily on beside her friend feeling a surging need to do something, to be active to stop waiting.

She hated waiting and it was all she had been doing all year, while the rest of her family was out there somewhere fighting she was trapped here not knowing if he was alive or dead.

Her throat went dry as it always did when she thought about Harry, when all this was over she was going to marry him...whether he liked it or not.

Leaving her behind. He was never going to leave her behind again.

She fumed swinging the hammock back and forth rather violently.

"Ginny?" Luna whispered nervously, half falling out of the hammock, "Could you slow down please?"

"Oh. Sorry." Ginny stopped swinging looking carefully at her friend, had she been crying, "Luna? Are you alright?"

"Oh yes," but something in Luna's voice wasn't right, it was forced, "He'll be back any moment now I'm sure." Luna's wide blue eyes were focused on the door, her small white hands latched desperately to the hammock she now realized was Neville's.

"Luna?"

"Yes?"

"Neville will be alright, he's a lot stronger than people think." Ginny was about to ask about Luna's feelings for the clumsy makeshift leader of Dumbledore's Army when the door finally opened and Neville walked in, looking beaten and ashamed with himself. She heard a sigh of relief escape Luna as the boy walked further into the room.

"The Carrow's took the food the house elves gave me." He told the room spreading his arms so that there was no doubt that he had no food, but what they noticed most of all were the cuts in his clothes and the raw red skin around his wrists.

"Neville that was hours ago have you been with the Carrow's until now?" Ginny asked her voice ringing across the room.

"It's fine, Madam Pomfrey fixed my arm, I'm just sorry I got caught, did everyone eat okay?" He asked looking at the broken and tired faces of the resistance around him. They all seemed to be nodding and smiling trying to reassure him that they were okay.

Ginny however with a stern and worried face walked right up to him and grabbed his arms, "What do you mean fixed your arm? Which arm? What happened?"

Neville slid his arms carefully from her hot grip and shrugged, "They strung me up, it's nothing." he shook his head and walked through the large room to sit on his hammock next to Luna. Ginny watched them for a few moments talk quietly to each other, Luna's eyes had returned to normal by now, everything slowly returned to normal as Ginny walked to the back of the room, alone, students doing homework, practising more dangerous and violent charms and curses, tending to sick and wounded.

Everywhere she looked it was just a normal day, but it wasn't, it shouldn't have been.

Hours later almost at the same time everyone in the room decided they had had enough of the day and pulled themselves into their hammocks to sleep the short fearful sleep of people at war.

Ginny swung herself into her high hammock, leaning over briefly to help Luna into her own hammock below her. She turned face down into the fabric and thought of Harry and how he was out there probably dead in a ditch and tried to smother her sobs, to keep them from the rest of the room.

Luna lay wide away in the darkness feeling as safe as one could at war nesseled between Ginny and Neville. She hoped that her father was alright, prayed that he was fine, that he was still safe even after Harry, Ronald, and Hermione had left him to the Deatheaters.

Neville heaved himself into his low hammock below Luna and Ginny and tried not to to think about how easily the Carrows had snapped his bone, trying to force out the sound of the snap and their laughter. Trying desperately to think of anything but his mother and of course not being able to think of anything but. He reached his hand into his pocked and pulled out a folded wrapper and squeezed it between his fingers trying to pull some of his mothers essence out of the carefully folded candy wrapper.

Luna's hand dropped down from above like it so frequently did. Her hand seemed to glow in the moonlight. Neville reached up to grab her hand but somehow he fell short, just like he had last night and the night before. His fingers almost touching hers but somehow he couldn't make himself take her hand. He squeezed his eyes closed disappointed with himself.

"Do you think Harry is still alive?" Ginny's voice quaked from the very top hammock. A sad broken question that rang throughout the hall.

"Yes." he told her opening his eyes and staring intently at the bottom of Luna's hammock, he could feel that Harry and the others were still alive, it was the only thing he really believed in anymore.

"They were all alive when they left me last month." Luna added her airy voice filling the silent room. It wasn't the silence of sleep it was the silence of twenty plus students straining their ears in desperation.

"That was a month ago," Ginny answered her voice small, "they could all be dead." her voice broke on the word dead.

"He's alive, they all are." he told the room a confidence in his voice he barely believed was his own. Eyes fixated on the tiny space between his hand and Luna's.

"How do you know?"

"If Harry was dead don't you think You-Know-Who would have come to the school? To show off?"

There was a general murmur of agreement.

"Now everyone go to sleep I have a herbology exam tomorrow." he called out into the room full of wide awake students.

"Neville that test's on Friday." Dean yelled back.

"Its not Thursday?"

"No."

"What day is it then?" he wondered aloud.

"It's Tuesday Neville," Luna told him from above, "its valentine's day." she whispered.

"Bloody hell really? That's awful." he leaned out of the shadow of Luna's hammock peering up into the darkness at the bottom of Ginny's hammock, that explained it. He could hear it now, coming from all sides of the quiet room the soft sounds of smothered crying.

Well at least he didn't have an exam tomorrow.


End file.
